It’s been a long hot summer and I  mean l-o-n-g. Droughts mean boredom for us four-legged kind. Why? Because there’s little or no work. I mean, where are the cattle? Walking the long paddock or trucked to greener pastures until things improve on the run. Hardly any beeves or sheep to chase, the ground so hard and dry that the pads of our feet crack up. Or maybe that’s because I’m getting soft from lack of work. You may well think that now we’ve had a bit of rain that things are on the up. But it’s early days yet. We need follow up rain to keep the oats for the cattle growing and we need quite a few more inches before we look at planting wheat or barley in May. But a bit of wet stuff from the heavens is a start and maybe, if we’re real lucky we will get more and the feed will grow and the beeves will come home… yippee. Ah mustering, what a sweet thought. But as I said, it’s been a long drought, on more than one front.

Little farm activity means not many visitors and that means a decreased likelihood of a good looking canine of the female variety rocking up in the back of a ute. So I’ve been on the prowl. There’s a neighbour next door who prefers girlie dogs. Yep, sweet as I say. It may have rained over the Easter weekend but that wasn’t going to stop old Jacky from having a full moon moment! And so it was that Lizzy and I shared a blissful night together.

Date night. I forgot how good it was. The nuzzling, the glow, the curled up head to tail comfort of the morning after. So you can imagine my dismay when I discovered that Liz was promised to another. Some kelpie from over the border whose master is keen on a bit of hybrid vigour in his next litter of pups. Well, it was sweet while it lasted.

Maybe I should join one of those on-line dating sites, like I-Doggy-Do or Paws-For-Me. What’s that noise. OMG! A truck with, wait for it, three neat little women barking in the back.

Breath freshener. Check. Quick roll in the wet grass. Check. Casual amble across to where Nicole’s talking to the driver. Check. And there they are. Three sisters. Jacky boy you’re back in business.